No simple answer fighting violence

On Monday, 11-year-old Romell Jones was killed by a bullet fired wildly from a moving car into a group of children playing in Alton Acres.

The killing of Jones was especially heartbreaking, uncalculated, cold and cowardly. It was fueled by a dispute over Facebook. The apparent targets were somewhere in the vicinity of where the gun was pointed from a moving car, as were dozens of innocent children.

That someone would be so flippant with the lives of children is terrifying.

It was the third shooting in Alton within 12 days.

Our mothers are afraid to send their children to school, and, simply put, there doesn’t appear to be any real solution to the epidemic of gun violence that has infected our community.

Wise men will belly up to the bar, and claim to know how to fix it — more guns, fewer guns, higher penalties, stronger law enforcement, weaker law enforcement, more education, better parenting, less Internet, more Internet, more laws, fewer laws — they’ll call for in any number of combinations.

And The President of the United States will cry in front of cameras and take executive action that does little more than buttress failed laws and rile up the opposition.

When the most frustrating level of gun violence hits home, it all feels a bit pointless and empty.

The man accused of firing the bullet that killed Jones is just a kid himself — 18-year-old Ta’mon F. Ford. He’s a rapper with the alias Loonie Noryegah with dozens of songs posted online. His tunes aren’t our cup of tea, but they are studio-polished and show that Ford took a lot of pride in his craft.

The songs also provide a window into the culture that Ford had immersed himself in.

A little over a month before Monday’s shooting, Ford posted a song on YouTube with the lyrics:

“[Expletive] be snitching and telling. They’ll go and lie to a reverend. One day they’re going to get the message. End up in hell or in heaven … They tried to send me to prison. The state’s attorney is talking [expletive], saying I won’t make a difference.”

We can’t say how autobiographical the song is, the theme is common for rap music. The narrative is as recurring as the events that left one young Alton life lost and another possibly ruined.

So, we spend more time grieving, more time in anger, more time analyzing the crime and more time debating what to do about it, until it happens again. It’s a frustrating circle.

Perhaps Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Gibbons summed it up well during a Thursday press conference announcing Ford’s arrest.

“There is no easy answer to stop violence, to stop an individual from making such a choice. The community comes together … that is the most important take away from this, so we can have justice.”

Perhaps it’s not about changing cultures or changing laws, but simply about changing minds.